- Amazon announced it will be hiring 75,000 workers in order to handle a massive surge in orders
Today Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced it will be hiring 75,000 workers in order to handle a massive surge in orders. This announcement comes on the heels of the company revealing it will be hiring 100,000 employees last month.
“We know many people have been economically impacted as jobs in areas like hospitality, restaurants, and travel are lost or furloughed as part of this crisis and we welcome anyone out of work to join us at Amazon until things return to normal and their past employer is able to bring them back,” said Amazon in a blog post. “We also continue to invest in pay increases and previously expected to spend $350 million to increase wages during this unprecedented time—we now expect that to be over $500 million.”
Amazon is not the only retailer to be ramping up efforts to hire. Walmart, Kroger, CVS, and Instacart have also seen surges in demand and they are also hiring hundreds of thousands of employees.
At the same time, Amazon employees have been demanding safer work conditions, especially due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Amazon had to shut down a warehouse in Kentucky last month after several workers tested positive for coronavirus.
As Amazon hires the additional 175,000 workers, it would put the company’s staff at nearly 1 million people.
To incentivize people to work for the company, Amazon increased hourly pay and doubled overtime pay for its warehouse workers. The warehouse and delivery are making an additional $2 per hour in the US, £2 in the UK, and €2 in the EU. Now Amazon is paying $15 per hour in certain areas of the U.S. for warehouse and delivery work.
